This week, Danielle Smith, the leader of Alberta’s Wildrose party, repeated her oft-stated position that the science on climate change isn’t settled.

Meeting with the Calgary Herald editorial board on Tuesday, she was asked at what point would she consider the science to be settled, considering that 97 per cent of 1,372 papers by climate scientists agree that human-activity is contributing to global warming. She skirted the issue.

“Let the scientists battle it out and, in the meantime, let’s support consumers in making the decision they want to make anyway in reducing their overall amount of emissions,”Smith said.

But, there is no battle, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes the journal Science. It has summarized the scientific consensus on climate change and notes that statements such as that made by Smith “suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.”

Except for a vocal minority of contrarians, the consensus is so overwhelming that even the federal government has accepted the science behind climate change. Smith is not wrong in saying that the science isn’t settled, yet most of the denial comes from those outside climate science, such as geologists. I sympathize. I studied geology, and climate change is a hard sell to a geologist, who views the world in terms of eons.

Most scientific bodies, including the Royal Societies of Canada and the U.K., as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also accept that human activity is changing the Earth’s climate.

A recent study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences surveyed 1,372 papers on climate and found at least 97 per cent of the most active climate researchers supported the standard model.

Andrew Weaver, one of Canada’s top climate modellers, said the science is firm.

“It’s more than firm, it’s as solid as a rock,” Weaver said. “The scientific community has used the word unequivocal. There are thousands of scientists working on this problem and if there was an Achilles heel to it, one person would find it. This is lowest common-denominator rhetoric.”

Alexander Wolfe, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Alberta, agrees.

“The candidate is expressing naivete,” he said of Smith. “It’s a real problem and it should be acknowledged by any serious political candidate for the premiership.”

UPDATED:

David Schindler of the University of Alberta, one of the world’s leading water experts, has joined in, slamming Smith as a science illiterate:

“I wonder if she thinks the flat Earth debate is settled? It’s very discouraging in an era when sound policy requires scientific literacy in its leaders.”

“You’ve got to have people to rely on for advice who are not hacks. It’s true of some of the other parties as well, most notably the PCs.

“For a party leader to say, ‘Oh, we’ve got to procrastinate more until the science is settled is just disgusting. We have to expect more command of science in our leader than this, for crying out loud.”

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